The Hidden Princess
by bStormhands
Summary: One-shots about Briar Rose in the forest: The Unicorn - Briar Rose dances and meets something unexpected
1. Briar Rose and The Wolves

Young Briar Rose and the Wolves

* * *

Young Briar Rose is playing with some of her squirrel and bird friends. She is a little ways from the cottage, but it can't be seen from here. When all her friends fly away and scatter, saying wolves are coming.

Curious, she climbs into the trees, like her squirrel friends and from high above she sees a small pack of hunting wolves. She climbs a few more branches up, Aunt Fauna told her wolves can be dangerous if you are small and on the ground.

She is not on the ground, but she knows she is small.

"Hello, Mr. Wolf and friends," Briar Rose says politely. The wolves looks around and then up. She hitches up her newish dress, she needed to have Aunt Merryweather try fixing it again. She tries so hard, but it still didn't fit right.

"Who are you?" asks the alpha wolf, his grey and black fur dappled in the forest sunlight.

"I am Briar Rose," introducing herself with a curtsy, her bare toes curling on the branch, as her etiquette book has taught her, "How do you do?"

"We hunt."

"Why?"

"We hunger."

"There is a nice patch of berries not far, that way." Briar Rose says pointing, she likes berries.

"We do not eat plants," the alpha said with disgust.

"What do you eat?"

"We eat prey."

"What is prey?"

"That which we eat. Deer, squirrels, flesh," the wolf answers slowly, considering the juicy man-cub.

"Would you eat me, if you could?"

"Yes." There was no need to deny the nature of the wolf. The man-cub could not get away from the encircling wolves.

"That wouldn't be very nice. I want to be your friend." Briar Rose twirls a golden curl around her finger.

"Wolves do not befriend prey," says the alpha wolf.

"Rose! Lunch! Briar Rose! Lunchtime!" They hear Aunt Flora call from the cottage, they all swing their heads to the sound of the call.

"I need to go to the cottage now. Will you let me pass?" Briar Rose asks nicely. The wolves had encircled the tree she was in.

"You may come down," said the alpha wolf, slyly.

Briar Rose thinks, biting her red, red lip. Aunt Fauna told her to very careful of wolves, they are smart and will try to trick you. Her book of fairy tales has several stories where wolves trick their prey so they are more easily eaten. The big wolf did not say he would let her pass.

"I think I'll go another way," says young Briar Rose, gracefully bounding across the branch to the neighboring tree, like she does when she chases her squirrel and chipmunk friends.

"If you fall, you will be our prey," calls the alpha wolf behind her, giving chase.

Briar Rose isn't worried, she has never fallen. One of the three gifts of Maleficent, though she does not know that.

She has to take a circuitous route to reach the tree that stands above the cottage, the wolves below her giving chase, reveling the chase, ready to devour her in case she falls.

Briar Rose leaps to the roof of the cottage and climbs in her open window, careful not to tip the vases over. She races down to the kitchen where Aunt Merryweather is setting out a vegetable stew for lunch.

"Aunt Fauna, Aunt Fauna! Wolves are chasing me and are outside!" Briar Rose calls as she jumps down the stairs.

"Hm, What is it dear? Wolves you say," says Aunt Fauna, distractedly.

Briar Rose stops right in front of Aunt Fauna, takes her hands and makes sure she is looking at her so she knows she had her aunt's attention. "Yes, wolves, Aunt Fauna. They are outside and want to eat me as prey."

Merryweather starts to pat her pockets, feeling for her wand, but it is still in the box under Flora's bed.

"What! Wolves? Prey!" Aunt Fauna gets a focused look on her face and heads for the door pushing up her sleeves.

Briar Rose rushes up the stairs to her room and climbs up to her window and watches as Aunt Fauna berates the small pack of wolves for coming so close to the cottage and endangering the girl. They sit before the powerful, disguised fairy, they know who she is. Making this one angry at the pack would be very bad.

The alpha looked past the powerful fairy as she finished, to the man-cub up in the window.

The little one had evaded them successfully, with cunning and her given abilities and had given good chase. So he said respectfully, with a little nod, to the hidden princess herself and not because of the fairy, "You are not prey."

"Thank you." Briar Rose said back from her window, then she stuck her tongue out of the side of her mouth in a credible imitation of a wolfish laugh and waved.

The wolves let their tongues hang out laughing back, then turned and ran into the forest to find prey.

* * *

Author's Note: I continue to work on my Aurora story. This is a little background into Briar Rose, that brings some things together, that she doesn't reference directly, but the effects of this encounter are seen in the rest of her life.

She is an amazing person. You'll see those books she references sitting in a little cubby next to her bed in the movie itself. Just don't ask how many times I've seen it or how long I stared at the frame of her crying on her bed before I noticed it. And the vases too.

So that gives her a total of 4 books: Cooking, sewing, etiquette and a book of old school fairy tales, filled with wolves, fairies, witches, wicked queens and poor princesses who go through terrible ordeals or who die.

That gives her the same number as Rapunzel: cooking, geology, botany, and an assumed sewing book that fell apart which was turned into a paper mache head. :)

Details, details, details. Weaving just what's there together makes for an amazing story.


	2. Squirrel Races

Author's Note: Okay, I was wasting some time free writing about Briar Rose in her forest as a child while reinstalling Windows, groan, again. I got some fun little ideas.

When she meet the wolves that was interesting but she spent more time with the squirrels and chipmunks and birds. So what was that like?

* * *

Squirrel Races

"I'm faster than you, I'm faster than you!" chanted the squirrel in a loud chitter from a high branch.

"Oh, you think so, huh?" chittered young Briar Rose back, cocking her hip back at the little squirrel. Putting the young carrot she had found and had been nibbling on in the pocket of her skirt.

It was afternoon, her chores were done and she had gathered sticks for firewood and was now wandering the forest not so near the cottage.

Then she leaped onto the branches so she was in a neighboring tree at the same height as her forest friend.

Other forest friends gathered around, it was always fun to watch Briar Rose race with the other animals.

The big deer could still out race her easily, but the young deer enjoyed the races.

The squirrel races were best as they were in the trees and while size mattered, knowing a good path was more important sometimes.

Owl backwinged between them and gave them a count down.

Hoo, hoo, hoo.

Hoo, hoo.

Hoo!

And they were off. They were racing back to the cottage as they always did, bounding through the branches.

Briar Rose was doing well keeping up the the squirrel, her bare feet delicately touching the thin branches as they crossed from tree to tree. Her hands steadying herself on overhead branches and gripping her skirt so her legs were more free to move.

Sometimes Briar Rose wondered why the skirt needed to be so long, it would be so much easier if the skirt was much shorter, but aunt Merryweather said it was proper for a young lady to have long skirts, so she is modest in front of others.

But the only others were her aunts and the occasional stranger lurking in the forest. She would hide in the trees and watch but never think to speak to them. But she would tell her beloved aunties about them and they would remind her to stay away from strangers. She would take away the traps some strangers left in the forest. She wondered what the strangers did with the friends and the trees and the plants they took, but her aunties didn't know, and she couldn't leave the forest to find out.

Briar Rose realized that she might lose this race, the path through the trees had a big gap coming up and she wouldn't be able to cross. Then remembering how squirrels jump from tree to tree, she climbed up higher into the big tree and leapt across, aiming for a lower branch in the next tree. She held her skirt down with one hand while ready to catch with her other.

In a heart stopping leap she crossed the gap between the trees. The branch she landed on bent almost to the ground, then rebounded launching her to the next tree. With a graceful flip she landed on a solid branch three trees from where she started.

A smile like the sun coming up bloomed on her face. She was now far ahead of the little squirrel and the birds made a raucous noise of appreciation. With fierce exultation she surfed down a branch into the glenn of the cottage, the birds around her and the squirrels coming finally.

Her little squirrel friend tiredly plopping into her lap acknowledged her speed.

"That was fun," said Briar Rose, "try again tomorrow?"

"You bet," said the little squirrel.


	3. Young Briar Rose and the Unicorn

- Young Briar Rose and The Unicorn

Young Briar Rose was out in the forest, Aunt Flora had sent her to check some of the food forests she had transplanted, while she checked others. It was a beautiful day, azure blue skies and the trees and bushes just blooming out.

It was finally spring, Briar Rose's favorite time of year, and it was wonderful. The snows had finally melted and the flowers bloomed. It had been a terrible winter. It didn't just snow occasionally, but it had snowed for nearly a month straight. She had felt so sad about that, but she wasn't sure why. She had spent so much of that time bundled up in her rose quilt that Aunt Merryweather had made, holding Lily her poppet close, trying not to cry so much.

For Christmas she had gotten paints and when she had run out of space on the canvas, she went to her room and painted the walls with vines and delicate flowers. A place of springtime no matter the time of year.

Briar Rose was so happy right now. The fruit trees and berry bushes were flowering. Aunt Merryweather had finally gotten her dress fitting just right, so it didn't gap or pinch or chafe, it only took 8 tries this time, it felt just like a hug all the time now. And the skirt was nice and full, perfect for twirling in.

Which she did, as she entered a large glade, that had plenty of room for twirling skirts. The music in her mind urged her on, and she danced, and leapt and bounded, her hair flying out around her with her skirt as she spun around on her bare feet, a look of utter freedom and concentration on her upraised face.

She was one with the music of her mind. The great, powerful, creative flow of the universe coursing through her mind and body, dancing in total innocence and freedom. As if no one was watching her at all.

Then she felt the eyes and the presence of someone watching her and she stopped, her skirt wrapping around her legs one last time before falling still, as did her hair about her face.

And she found herself face to face with a unicorn.

The shiny, glowing white coat of the unicorn mare was dazzling in the spring sun, backed as it was by the dark green shade of the forest behind her. Her long fluted silver horn glistening in the sun. The dark blue eyes seeing her.

Briar Rose was breathing hard from the dancing and the surprise; she waited a moment as she calmed herself. Unicorns were special, she knew from the stories in her fairy tale book and from what Aunt Fauna had told her. She didn't know any were in this forest.

"Hello, Miss Unicorn, I'm Briar Rose." she said with a curtsy, not exactly sure how to greet a unicorn, her etiquette book didn't cover magical creatures, so she used the manners for witches and fairies, which were close, she hoped.

"Hello, Briar Rose. You are quite brave to give me your name so readily," said the unicorn in the manner of the unicorns. Which sounded a lot like horse, but more elegant and refined and so pretty.

"I-I am." Briar Rose said concerned that she did something wrong.

"A name is a powerful thing. Do you respond to anything more readily then the sound of your own name? Who are you, if not your name? It can define who you are, if you are not careful. It makes you who you are or you make it. The choice is yours to make. Be careful of your name."

"Why are you here?" asked Briar Rose, not sure what to do with what she had just learned.

"You called me," replied the unicorn, looking steadily at her.

"I-I did?" Briar Rose, was confused, she had just been dancing, she hadn't been trying to call a unicorn.

"Yes, you did. You danced in virtue, freedom and innocence. You danced as you yourself really are, Briar Rose. Who _you_ really are. You danced as Briar Rose really is. I could not help, but come to see such beauty and love and innocence."

"Thank you. I guess," Briar Rose was still unsure of what to do with a unicorn, "can we be friends? I've learned so much from my forest friends, I would like to learn from you too."

"Perhaps we can be friends."

"Thank you." Briar Rose put out her hand to touch the unicorn. The horn came down and pointed right at her and the eyes of the unicorn went flaming red. Briar Rose stopped.

"I'm sorry. Did I frighten you?" asked Briar Rose. The unicorn stood firm, the horn still pointed at her heart. Then she remembered how Aunt Fauna taught her to greet a horse. To turn away and let it come the last little way to you.

Briar Rose was worried, that horn looked very sharp. She had not thought the unicorn would hurt her, but the way those eyes glowed red now concerned her deeply. That horn could gore her worse then the tusks of a boar, and the way it was pointing steadily at her pounding heart, she would die if it penetrated her, but she wanted to get to know every friend in the forest.

Biting her red, red lip Briar Rose turned and looked away from the unicorn and held out her hand, waiting for the unicorn to touch it, run away or run her through with it's horn.

Her hand shook from the fear she felt. But she was in her forest and she would always be safe in her forest, that's what her aunties had always told her, she was hoping really hard now that was true.

She felt a warmth near her hand and then after a moment the feel of the soft nose of the unicorn on her hand.

"Yes, Briar Rose, I would be your friend. My name is Cloud Dancer of Avandell." said the unicorn in the manner of the unicorn, her eyes a normal blue again.

"Thank you, Cloud Dancer of Avandell. That makes me so happy, thank you for sharing your name with me," said Briar Rose giving the beautiful unicorn a hug. "I like to race squirrels through the trees, what games do you like to play?"


End file.
